I continue to improve my skills in photography, and I have started to develop my workflow for printing. To that end, I recently got the Canon Pixma Pro-100. And I've come to realize that printing is going to be another learning experience for me.

I use CS6 and my Dell 2410 is color managed using an I1 display pro. Since the printer is wide gamut, I have been using the aRGB color space. Adobe manages the colors.

Prints do not match the image on screen. Strong color cast - can't even begin to tell you which way - think it is too cyan or maybe magenta or both! Here is the kicker. When I go to the print screen in CS6, the image there closely resembles the print and looks nothing like the PSD file. Ditto if I use the Canon print utility.

I'm thinking I must have some sort of color management conflict, but I can't think of where to look. Any ideas?

Are you soft proofing? If not, what does the image look like if you soft proof it? Canon occasionally ships... interesting profiles, so you could in fact be doing everything right. (The profiles that came with the $12,000 flagship iPF 9000, for example, made yellow prints.)

View | Proof Setup, then pick the same paper profile and rendering intent you're using in the print dialog.

JimKied wrote:
I use CS6 and my Dell 2410 is color managed using an I1 display pro. Since the printer is wide gamut, I have been using the aRGB color space. Adobe manages the colors.

When you say aRGB, I assume you mean AdobeRGB, not AppleRGB or AdobeWideGamutRGB?

If this is true, where are you using it? Are you using it as a working/editing space? Or are you using it as the printing profile?

What you need for the printing profile is the paper/printer ICC profile, not the AdobeRGB space profile. All the paper manufacturers have paper profiles for downloading. And the profiles for Canon branded papers should have been installed when the driver was installed.

I'm going to try to insert some snips that I hope will show you my settings. If you need something else, please let me know. And I goofed up when uploading the pictures. The last image is what I hoped it would look like (PSD file) and the other images you see are in the print dialogs.

This shows the same image in the CS6 print settings frame. Note difference in colors. The prints look like this.

This is the printer settings where I hope I have turned off printer management.

I have the Pro-100 and the Pro-9500 II before it.
I have found you need to make a lot of prints to "learn" what the printers are going to do. How they work and interpret things. Then just make the necessary corrections. Even if the screen looks "different".

Both of mine seem to have a reddish or warm bias to them.. I know this so I plan and adjust accordingly.
I actually like the warmness on my portraits. So it's all good, Right?
When you find the right combo, they work very well.

I print to a Canon Pro9500MKII from PSE11 and let the printer manage the colors. My Dell monitor has never been calibrated (I have only lowered the brightness) and my prints look just like what I see on the monitor. I have always used Canon paper, so their profiles must be doing a good job for me.

There are many on this forum with a lot more experience than I have printing, but, I was having problems with the colors matching until I let the printer manage them instead of Photoshop.

I appreciate all the suggestions. Being new at this it kinda affects my confidence when two different views of the same image in the same application do not match (regular editing space and the print space). I'm not entirely certain, but I am kinda getting the impression that is not unusual. So is that a correct statement? That the image as you have tried to get it in the editing space may not look the same as the image when you bring up the print settings screen? If so, what is the best way to edit the image so it look the way you want it in the print settings screen?

And guys, I am going to be away for a week starting tomorrow, so you may not see me check back until next week. But I do want to figure this out. So any suggestions you have - I will appreciate it.

I know I can come across as being quite terse, but that is not my intension

You can set up Photoshop so that you can switch the main view between full and soft proofing. After that you can toggle between the two with a key stroke: Ctrl+Y for soft proofing, and Ctrl+shift+Y for out of gamut colors.

View > Proof Setup > Custom…, then in Device to Simulate, choose the profile you intend to use, and the rendering intent, etc, then save it with a name that reflects the paper and the rendering.

After that, you can toggle between normal and soft proofing modes with the above mentioned shortcut key, at anytime you want when editing.

[The problem with converting to one color space profile from another, is that it is always done colorimetrically – ie. out of gamut colors are always clipped. It is far better to leave the image in ProPhotoRGB and then decide on the rendering intent at the printing stage. I know Photoshop implies that you can choose a rendering intent for a color space conversion, but it doesn’t work – color space version.2 profiles don’t have enough information to do a perceptual based conversion.]

Brian A - no worries. You are a valuable resource on this forum. I'll take any suggestions you have any way I can get them. I won't have time today and the next few days to try stuff. But I will be back.

I'm back. I think I'm going to try baby steps first. My first question is should I expect the image shown on my monitor when I have the Photoshop print settings screen up to match the soft proofed image as it displays on my monitor? I think that is my biggest confidence killer - that the two images do not match. Note that at this pointin the process I haven't printed anything yet. Just seeking confirmation about what I should be seeing.

you ought to get within 90-95% matching. it'll never be perfect and match 100% (due to different technologies ie. paper reflection vs. transmissive LCD) but at the level you can do it, you can reliably count on what you're seeing to print.

OK - I'm just sticking with Canon papers right now and the two images look pretty different to me. But then maybe not unusually different to you pros. So it may just be me. But to be sure, is there a (erroneous) color management setting that would make them be off (not match close enough)? If not, I guess my next step is to figure a way to change the profile to get a better match?